I’m fresh from reddit. Lemmy seems great and I wonder what I could do to help? I have a fairly powerful home server, would it help if I ran a Docker instance of Lemmy on it? Spread the load maybe? Thanks for your insights.

  • TeaHands@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    Running an instance definitely does help, but the problem is convincing people your small instance is competently run and there to stay.

    For people unable to selfhost, ways to help include:

    • Making posts and comments, especially in smaller “dead” communities. Preferably about things other then Reddit.
    • Contributing fixes on GitHub
    • If you’re unable to do that last one, contributing quality reproducible bug reports on GitHub (rather than in, say, instance-specific meta communities)
    • Helping to answer questions from all the confused new Lemmings, yes a lot of them are asked repeatedly but we want people to learn and stay so be polite and patient.
    • Making sure people know about finding communities through sites like lemmyverse.net
    • Curating lists of related communities and approaching mods to have it stickied or added to their community sidebar (helps people navigate around within their niche interests)
    • Going to the extra effort of including local links when you mention a community, so people can find their way directly to the subscribe button. Example: !crochet@lemmy.ca (Lemmy / Kbin)
    • And of course, shitposting memes.
    • SMT42@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Preferably about things other than Reddit.

      Good point… lemmy has a fair amount of content now with the huge influx of users. But at least 60% of it is Reddit talk or just meta about Lemmy

      • TeaHands@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        It’s understandable, people are excited to talk about the new place and what’s happening to the old places is big news. But plenty of people aren’t here for news, aren’t subbed to those big communities where everyone is discussing that stuff, and would benefit from seeing more activity in their smaller more niche communities.

        So anyone seeing this, if you’ve got a hobby that’s more niche than “video games and shitposting”, find the community or magazine for it and go do your thing!